The present invention relates to routing of data including multimedia between electronic devices, and more particularly but not exclusively to rerouting of incoming communications that may or may not include multimedia to devices other than the initial receiving device. Data may arrive from external sources via communication or generated by, or at, a device. Data may be a package or a stream. Such a stream may be unidirectional, bi-directional or multidirectional.
With the introduction of mobile communication devices, telecommunications technology has transformed society over the past decade. The ability to communicate almost anywhere, anytime, with few geographical limitations has resulted in a society, in both social and business contexts, which is almost always on-line. Mobile communication devices today typically have data processing ability which allows them to handle multi-media, and different types of devices are today able to communicate with each other, either directly via a permanent or temporary link or indirectly via a network. Thus data, including multimedia, can be directed or routed from one device to another device. The idea of multi-media routing stems from the myriad of opportunities which present themselves in routing signals from one device or kind of device to another. However, in general, the playing of multimedia data is limited, at least in the short term, to the device on which it is received, or to those in which the data originates. This limitation can be a considerable limitation on the user's ability to enjoy the multimedia since different devices have very different capabilities regarding the playing of multimedia.
The media playing devices considered specifically in the present disclosure include both mobile devices (cell phones, PDA's, handheld devices, etc.) and non-mobile devices (land/fixed line phones, computer monitors, Hi-Fi sets, speakers, etc.). Some of the devices may be used for just one or two media types and others are more general in their applicability, which is to say it is possible to use the devices in different modes for playing several media types: voice, text, images, and video. Likewise, the devices are used in various locations: at the office, home, car, hotel room, plane, outdoors, etc.
Most current mobile devices in particular provide relatively poor multi-media capabilities including digital audio, image, and/or video capabilities (as well as other media capabilities) in comparison with other existing devices such as land/fixed line phones, computer monitors, TV screens and Hi-Fi sets. Compared to high quality media playing equipment, even 3rd generation mobile devices (3G) are of inferior quality.
A number of patent applications discuss rerouting of communications from one communication unit to another. An example is GB 2,370,451, which discloses a communication unit that detects the presence in its vicinity of a second communication unit and determines its identity. If the identity is found to be of a predetermined set (e.g. of communication units having the same owner) calls made to the second communication unit are diverted to the first unit. The arrangement is useful where a user has multiple communication units, for example a car telephone and a cellular handset, with differing telephone numbers as the user may be contacted using any of these.
WO0141317A3: call diversion system, discloses a system specifically for redirecting calls between satellite and terrestrial cellular systems. The disclosure addresses the issue of reformatting data messages for the transition.
Neither of the above systems takes into consideration the types of multimedia content of the incoming calls data or playing quality and usage comfort when deciding whether to redirect, and redirection is based on devices having a shared ownership or otherwise being part of a predetermined set. In the above-described systems the user typically has only limited control over rerouting. Nevertheless, it would be highly advantageous to provide the user with the ability to select a target device, based on the type of multimedia content, and furthermore to choose a device for play or storage of the content independently of the initially targeted or originating device.